Lone Wolf Attacks – Australian Prespective

What is the issue?

• Terror operatives have increasingly promoted decentralised ‘Lone wolf’ attacks across cities.
• Australia has been advocating to perceive the new trend as a psyological crime - which calls for a radically different approch.

How are lone-wolfs different?

• The common thread among all such attacks was that all these people acted on their own without any command from elsewhere.
• Most lone-wolfs get indoctrinated online out of own volition without any direct contact with radical propagators.
• Notably, objects of common use - like trucks, axes, knives are innovatively used as deadly weapons.
• These features of lone-wolf attacks helps in effectively skiping the conventional surveillance radars.

• This strand of terrorism is not akin to conventional war that can have definitive beginning and end.
• It is rather closer to crime, which can best understood through, and handled by, the tools of law enforcement.

• Therefore, the security challenge is to be more efficient when it comes to preventing indoctrination than the actual act.

How should investigations proceed?

• Structured operations of conventional terrorism called for a targeted nuianced policing coupled with tough physical action at times.
• On the contrary, the lone wolf strand is practabily untraceable by the security radar.
• Hence, this stresses the need for enhancing security dialogue to a massive population in a non-targetive way to trace for specifics.
• Also, in most cases till now, a family member or a friend noticed a significant change in the activities of the would-be attacker.
• But he/she wasn’t sure of reporting it due to lack of substansiality and the fear of an excessively muscled police interventions.
• While in most cases behavioural aberrations might just be innocent changes,  tracking them would help enhancing security.
• Softening the tone of police responses would enhance reporting and thereby increase tracability of lone-wolfers. 

Is it realated to Pyscological health?

• Australia had constituted many ‘Fixated Threat Assessment Centers’ in 2006.
• That center was created to find people with obsessive, stalker-like fixations (not terrorists) on public figures and celebrities.
• Such people were overwhelmingly found to suffer from  some form of mental illness, particularly psychosis.
• These centers has partnership with the health department to council these people and enhance their social cognition.
• Terror prespective - Research to find patterns in the personalities of conventional terrorists have proven  futile.
• But preperators of lone-wolf terrorism, have been found to exhibit a higher level of psychological disturbance and depression.
• Hence, expanding the scope of operations of such centers would in fact screen out lone-wolfers.
• The mental illness angle would also redefine remedial programs and rehabilitation for lone-wolfers.

Source: New York Times